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Dessert

Very Good Lemon Creams

A lemon custard made by steeping lemon rinds, sugar, and water, then adding eggs and heating until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Very Good Lemon Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon base

  1. Combine the lemon rinds, sugar, and spring water in a bowl and let sit for 6 hours.

Cook the cream

  1. Strain the lemon juice and add it to the mixture along with the beaten eggs, then strain again.

  2. Remove the lemon rinds and stir the mixture continuously over gentle heat for 6 to 8 minutes until it thickens.

  3. For a lighter cream, use only the yolks of 6 eggs.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Coagulate as they heat, setting the mixture into a thick, creamy custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and softens the sharp, acidic lemon flavour.
Fresh lemons
Provide the sharp acidity and aromatic oils that flavour the cream.

The step that matters

Stirring over gentle heat. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures and can scramble if the mixture overheats or is left unstirred. Continuous stirring over gentle heat keeps the custard smooth and thickening evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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